December 17, 2017

There's plenty to be worried about in the goat rope that is the RUSSIA investigation, but one item that hasn't drawn much attention is the almost criminal level of incompetence shown by the investigators.

Consider the case of love-struck Trump hater and nominal federal agent Peter Strzok. Before being added to Muller's Insane Clown Posse, he was a high-ranking counterintelligence official. That is to say, his job was to stop foreign spies from gaining access to our national security secrets.

A key part of this is being aware of and using only the safest communications protocols as well as limiting exposure to blackmail.

So what does this paragon of security do?

Carries on an affair with a co-worker and then texts about it constantly over an unsecured government cell phone.

Seriously, with idiots like this in charge of national security, who needs RUSSIA? All the Rooskis have to do is do FOIA requests for this twit's text records.

Of course, this is the same guy who figured that it was perfectly okay for the Secretary of State to blatantly violate security protocols and keep a home-brewed email server chock full of classified data in some minion's bathroom.

I take it as a given at this point that all of Strzok's texts as well as all of Hillary's emails are under review in Moscow. I also assume that Team Clinton is perfectly fine with this because they let it happen in the first place.

What they are not fine with is having the extent of this damage known to the American people.

Indeed, I was fascinated to see noted NeverTrump asshole and fantasy strategist Max Boot whining that the release of all these incriminated texts violated Strzok's privacy.

On the poor dear! I guess Mr. Counterintelligence never read the part about his i-phone being for official duty only and (like all government data systems) there being no expectation of privacy.

I've smacked Boot around before, but this is a milestone of stupid, even for him. I hear he's written some decent books but after this, I can't believe he knows how to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel.

RUSSIA basically wrote the book on compromising intelligence officer and Strzok couldn't have been more vulnerable if he'd been walking through DC handcuffed and blindfolded with a "kick me" sign taped to his back.

In a functional government, he'd already be fired and under intense interrogation to determine just how bad the security breach has been. Alas, that's not what we have today.

November 16, 2017

Seems like only yesterday I was arguing that the Dems and their Never Trump sycophants were full of crap regarding their overblown indignation at unproven allegations of sexual assault directed at Roy Moore.

Oh wait, it was only yesterday. Timing is everything, I guess.

So now we learn that Democrat Senate windbag (but I repeat myself) Al Franken has been exposed as an abuser of women with handy photographic evidence of his sexual assault.

Oddly, the Senate Outrage Brigade has been rather muted in their condemnation. Instead of demanding Franken's immediate resignation on pain of expulsion, they want to refer the matter to a committee.

Yeah, they take sexual assault super seriouslyin the Senate.

Of course there are significant differences between the two cases.

Roy Moore stands accused of dating teenagers four decades ago and potentially copping a feel on a 14-year-old without consent.

Tellingly, there is no physical proof that any of this happened. There are also conflicting accounts from various parties and witnesses. The fact that it was so long ago means that memories are unreliable and it is almost impossible to reconstruct the alleged scenarios.

In short, there is no objective way for an outside observer to tell the truth. Opponents of Moore claim to believe the women, but that's all they can do - make a statement of belief.

But they can't actually prove anything.

Al Franken is also accused of assault and harassment, and like the charges against Moore, many of these charges cannot be objectively proven. Unlike Moore, his incidents were much more recent and it is therefore easier to verify some of the details. Still, we can't prove everything.

What can be objectively proven is that Franken groped his victim while she slept and even took a photograph of it.

A number of progressive abuse-enablers have tried to argue that Franken didn't actually touch the woman's breasts or that because she was wearing body armor it didn't really count, but we all know that's a line of bull.

(Question to progressives: if he wagged his penis in front of her sleeping face, would that be okay is well? What forms of non-consensual humiliation are now within bounds? But I digress.)

We know this is a serious crime because if a GI was doing the exact same thing, Franken and the Dems would be demanding his court-martial.

But because it's a Democrat Senator, they'll take it to a committee and try to bury it. Franken will likely get a Strong Taking-To and that will end it.

A soldier who did that would end his career and possibly get jail time, but that's because Rules Are For The Little People.

Of course, what makes this even more fun is that Franken - like all the other Dems - has been shooting his mouth off of late about how much he wants to care for and protect women. Sexual abuse is totally a high priority for him. Look at the delight on his face as he does it!

Let's face it, the DC swamp is the natural habitat of sexual predators. For all their blather about protecting women, what they are really about is protecting their own power, which they use as they see fit.

If everything alleged about Roy Moore is true, the fact is he will be right at home in the Senate.

November 11, 2017

Once again, we at the Posse take time away from our spleen-venting to thank our veterans for their service to our nation.

With the advent of the Trumpening, I had high hopes that the Veterans Administration and other bodies might actually do their freaking jobs. Certainly the administration's appointees are heavy on the military side, but so far, I'm not seeing a lot of news regarding this.

Then again, that may mean things are getting better since we know that the media would love nothing more than to smear Trump as being indifferent to the sufferings of our former military members. Who can forget that utter b.s. about how he is mean to the widows of fallen servicemen?

Maybe later today they'll be some fake news that whitewashes the Obama Adminsitration's shameful record. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

To begin with, we must understand that for almost its entire history, China has been almost entirely uninterested in the world around it. China's focus has been almost entirely internal. Sun Tzu's masterful treatise on war dates from the time before China was unified and is essentially a guide for how to win what would be a civil war today.

When threatened by an external power, China has either tried to fence it off (the Great Wall) or simply absorb the invasion.

This is how China handled both the Mongols and the Manchurians. The former never managed to conquer the entire Chinese state while the latter did - and ran it into the ground. In both cases, these what started as foreign policy eventually became a domestic issue. The end of the Manchu (or Qing) dynasty was the story of the last century - the revolution of 1911, the era of warlords, the rise of the Kuomintang and the emergence of Chairman Mao and his communists.

At no point in the last two centuries can one point to deft Chinese diplomacy averting conflict or achieving strategic goals. In fact, China's diplomatic efforts have been consistently short-sighed and often counterproductive.

That's why when I read about how China's goals are served by Lil' Kim's nuclear tantrum, I have wonder what these analysts are smoking.

Let us assume that China's goal is to drive the US from the western Pacific. What would be the easiest way to do that?

The obvious answer is to remove military tension from Korea. The US has been trying to reduce its overseas military commitments for thirty years. A non-nuclear and non-militant North Korea would give the US the perfect excuse to remove the last of its forces.

A quiescent Korea would also remove the incentive of Japan to expand its own defenses.

Thus if China is actually aiding and abetting Kim's drive to build ICBMs, it is achieving the exact opposite of its stated goal.

South Korea has been undergoing a steady and wide-ranging modernization of its military. It now possesses a missile defense system which undermines China's own nuclear deterrent.

More alarming still from the Chinese perspective, Japan is now throwing aside its post-World War II policy of pacifism and undertaking a massive rearmament program. It's latest "destroyer" is in fact a fleet aircraft carrier with formidable power projection capabilities. Japan is even contemplating something unthinkable not the long ago: Building its own nuclear arsenal.

This is an unmitigated disaster for Chinese strategic ambitions. Even if North Korea's nuclear blackmail forces a South Korean capitulation, the predicted result would be a far more dangerous Japan.

We must recall that Japan is far more strategically secure than South Korea. Seoul is literally under Kim's guns; Japan is much farther removed. To convincingly menace Japan with conventional forces would require a naval investment that would take a decade or more to pay off. To do so using nuclear weapons will only convince Japan to reply in kind. Given Japan's first-rate tech and science community, nuclear weapons could be developed in short order - assuming the US didn't simply hand over the blueprints.

All of this is painfully obvious, so why is China tolerating this behavior?

The answer isn't that they are playing "go" or three-dimensional chess, it is that China's foreign policy is one of malign neglect driven primarily by internal politics.

Consider the ultimate instrument of Chinese national power, the People's Liberation Army. This outfit is still organized on Stalinist lines and despite propaganda, it is almost entirely focused on internal security. Its generals rise and fall based on political patronage, not ability.

The PLA is also a key economic player, with its own enterprises. China's political and economic systems are remarkably corrupt and this extends into the military.

Part of the problem is that China possesses no great martial tradition. Historically soldiers have been considered low-status individuals, essentially bandits with uniforms. Military careers carry none of the prestige that they do in Western countries. Japan and India both had a strong historic (and respected) soldierly class and they have used this to build a modern military culture of efficiency. That simply doesn't exist in China.

This article - which is ostensibly about China's leader strengthening his internal position - contains a key passage explaining some of the problems the PLA faces:

The Political Work Department used to be headed by Xu Caihou, who along with a fellow former vice-chairman of the military commission, Guo Boxiong, was accused of taking bribes in exchange for promotions. Guo was jailed for life last year, while Xu died of cancer in 2015 before he could face trial.[Emphasis added.]

This is a level of corruption far beyond anything seen even in the most decadent Western military establishments. Part of the reason for this is that the generals are also politicians, filling key seats in the Communist Party hierarchy.

(Cynics might suggest the charges are trumped-up, but even fake charges need to be plausible. These particular leaders might not have sold promotions, but it clearly is a problem.)

Xi Jinping is a lot more worried about a coup sponsored by his enemies than he is about a foreign invasion, and he and those around him apportion their effort accordingly.

Thus China's lack of sensible policy is the result of a distracted and inexperienced foreign policy establishment fumbling its way forward while constantly watching their backs. Anyone expecting Chinese diplomacy to somehow pull off a strategic miracle in Korea is expecting something that has never happened before and is unlikely to happen now.

August 22, 2017

I did not get a chance to see the president's speech, but having perused it contents, I'm struck by how utterly sensible it is.

In fact, it's shocking in its sensibility.

The fact is, the US cannot simply pull out and declare victory. We already tried that and it didn't work. The Obama administration cared only about winning the news cycle and with it the next election. Global strategy was at best an afterthought.

Indeed, Obama's single greatest strategic accomplishments were an unenforceable climate agreement and a deal that legitimized Iran's nuclear program that his own staffers admitted was a con job.

Trump is taking a dramatically different approach. First and foremost, he is treating war as a question of life and death rather than a photo opportunity. Key strategic decisions will be made by his generals, not a bunch of White House political hacks.

When we strike, we won't hold a press conference to alert our enemies. We will also empower commanders to do what they need to do, rather than subjecting every decision to a paralyzing legal analysis.

Given the terrible strategic situation he inherited and the broken state of our military (the Navy is being forced to stand down after yet another collision), Trump has his work cut out for him. Fortunately, he seems to have a solid command team in place and is willing to listen to their opinions.

If his his critics were honest, they would admit that this is a simple, defensible strategy, based on common sense. It is a refreshing change.

August 13, 2017

We live in an age with no historical memory. Americans are taught that slavery is a uniquely American invention, that racism is found only here and of course the Hitler was a man of the right and uniquely evil.

None of these things are true, as anyone with a shred of historical knowledge would know. The last lie is particularly troublesome because it actually trivializes Hitler and reduces him to the secular equivalent of Satan. He wasn't.

Because the left has distorted history, it cannot learn its lessons. One of the most important lessons of the last century was that appeasement can only buy time. Sometimes, this is worthwhile, as it allows an unprepared nation to take emergency measures to weather the next crisis.

Often, however, it plays into the hands of the aggressor, allowing them to further consolidate their power and increase their lead on the power curve. This was the lesson of German rearmament and expansion under Adolf Hitler which came to a head with the Munich Crisis of 1938.

Sad to say, the right is not immune to revisionism, and this article offers a good example of what these people get wrong.

Far from being a disciplined, war-ready fighting force, the Wehrmacht was still very much a work in progress in 1938. The dreaded Panzers were still in their infancy. Though we equate World War II Germany with Blitzkrieg, most of the its army depended on horse-drawn transport and that would be true for the entire war.

The reason for this was that Germany had only started rebuilding its military in 1934. It had a number of secret organizations, but the critical areas of artillery and mid-range officers and NCOs were very thin. Building an effective army is more than just drafting people and handing them a rifle.

The Western Powers, by contrast, had a much larger nucleus to work with. Their rate of growth would be slower, but they had a commanding lead.

Had Hitler been opposed, there is ample evidence that the army would have removed him from power. The Wehrmacht knew it was not ready to fight in 1938. Indeed, a telling detail about the whole affair is how many Czech tanks were brought into the German armory and used in front-line service. Similarly the impressive Skoda Works were added to the German war machine, with disastrous results for the world.

When I wrote about the lack of good choices, I wasn't kidding. In the Age of Explainers, ill-educated brats at places like Vox have created the impression that most problems are simple, the problem is that people are stupid. They alone see things as they are.

The opposite is true - Vox's idiots think complex problems are simple because they can't see the complexity.

There were no easy choices in 1938. Standing up to Hitler would likely have resulted in a war, and potentially a coup in Germany. What would have happened next was far from certain. The point is that it could have been done and the balance of forces were better for the Western Powers (and Poland, and Czechoslovakia) than they were a year later.

North Korea with one nuclear ICBM is exponentially more powerful than it is with none. Once that event happens (and it will happen if nothing is done to stop it), the entire equation changes and any conflict will be far more devastating.

The appeasement lobby tends to justify inaction by playing up on existing dangers and downplaying future ones. Thus we have commenters emphasizing North Korea's artillery positions with range of Seoul, but ignoring the fact that ICBMs could reach all of South Korea as well as Japan. Which has greater potential for carnage?

The fact is that South Korea's capital has been under the North's guns since 1953. They have plans in place (recently updated, no doubt) to mitigate this threat.

The effectiveness of this artillery is not certain. We do know that a high number of dud shells were fired in earlier exchanges, indicating that North Korea's quality control isn't anything to celebrate. Given that its military hasn't seen active combat in sixty years, there are reasons to question how well it can perform. We know it's good at marching around. Other skills are less certain.

South Korea possess a formidable military of its own, backed up by ours. As soon as the guns open up, counter-battery fire will begin to silence them.

Similar predictions were made in 1938, by the way. Much was made of Germany's air weapon, whose effectiveness as a strategic threat was greatly exaggerated. Again, it isn't the circumstances but the arguments that are so familiar.

There are no easy answers to this problem, which is why the three previous presidents decided to do nothing about it. We've now run out of time. God help us.

August 08, 2017

For most of my adult life, the American people have been offered a false choice regarding dealing with North Korea: Negotiation or war.

Turns out, we're going to get the war one way or another. The current Kim is likely insane, which is not surprising how he grew up. Deterrence rests entirely on both parties being rational. That doesn't seem to be our boy Kim.

Alternatively, he is entirely rational and believes that the US will never stand up to him because it never has before. These are the wages of appeasement.

Of course the media is blaming the situation on Trump, but if Obama (or Bill Clinton, or either Bush) had taken care of business, we won't even have this problem.

One of the reasons I don't trust the modern left with any sort of responsibility is their tendency to come up with simple, nice-sounding solutions that rest on impossible premises.

The right also has its idiots, most of whom worked in the Bush White House and are now in the NeverTrump camp.

The key point in dealing with North Korea is that war is likely the only option and the question is simply when we start it.

Do we wait until he has more warheads and better missiles or do we go in now?

The power curve is turning solidly against us. Each passing day allows him more time to perfect his weaponry and extend the range and accuracy of his missiles.

Let us recall that there was a time when we knew North Korea had neither. We let that opportunity slip past because the threat of North Korea's conventional artillery targeting Seoul was too great.

Seoul is still threatened, but now so is Japan and the Western Pacific.

One of the lessons of history is that the elites are never as smart or in control as they think they are. The credentialed Mandarins lecturing us on how to handle the current crisis are the same people who failed to solve it for the past 20 years.

There are no good options left. All we can do now is try to pick the least worst one.

August 06, 2017

One of the most alarming developments over the last few years has been the way government leaders have chosen to signal their virtue rather than tend the core business at hand of maintaining basic services and protecting the public that elected them.

An obvious place to start was the administration of Barack Obama. He claimed to be able to control the ocean levels, but despite commanding the largest military in the world, was unable to protect his ambassador to Libya from a rampaging mob. A single company of mechanized infantry or even a flight of attack helicopters would have dispersed the rabble, but despite the pleas from his "dear friend Chris," no such plans were in place and no such aid arrived.

Later on we learned that US military readiness had been severely degraded, with the majority of Marine aviation no longer capable of flight. Other branches reported similar shortfalls. The result has been yet another deadly crash.

Instead of tending to this, Obama decided to make a symbolic announcement of openness to transgenders without bothering to consult the generals or figure out a plan to implement it. He got the credit and handed the mess to his successor.

Obama's leadership also emphasized turning a blind eye to Muslim radicalization in the US, which is why so many "known wolves" were able to wreak havoc.

Similarly, New York's showoff Mayor Bill de Blasio has shown himself unable to plow snow, deal with the homeless problem or address rising violence against his police force. He is, however, great at leading "The Resistance" to the president while being flown to Germany at taxpayer expense.

When he wanted to do a photo-op of the subways, he first had the police clear out all the vagrants.

It isn't just an American thing. The UK recently witnessed a completely preventable disaster at the Grenfell Tower apartment building. The grisly work of finding and identifying the bodies continues, yet contrast this with the recent fire at the (aptly named) Torch Tower in Dubai, which resulted in no loss of life despite being one of the tallest residential structures in the world.

When Donald Trump was elected, there was much hand-wringing about his personality and alleged erratic leadership style. The NeverTrumper traitors insisted the Hillary was the safe, competent choice. This was loudly seconded by people who claimed that the detached professionals in American government were horrified by what Trump might do and would therefore use extra-legal moves to stop him.

In reality, these "detached professionals" are anything but. Their willingness to throw criminal law aside in the zeal to overturn the election has illustrated why our foreign policy is a mess and our national security is deteriorating.

One wonders how much safer Americans would be if half the NSA, CIA and FBI had been looking for terrorists rather than tapping The Donald's calls for Samantha Powers' reading pleasure.

The recent leak of unedited phone transcripts shows just how blind these people are to the damage they are doing to the country. World leaders need to have secure and confidential communications with each other. By leaking the contents of discussions with Australia and Mexico, these operatives have damaged the ability of any US president to conduct diplomacy.

They have set a dangerous precedent and must be severely punished.

They may think that their extreme and lawless actions demonstrate how bad Trump is, but they are actually showing their own contempt for the rule of law. There are mechanisms in place to remove a president from office. That power does not belong to unelected bureaucrats who view their responsibilities as optional.

The Justice Dept. is promising a major investigation, which means that the leakers will shift their effort from undermining the government to covering their tracks and lawyering up.

July 29, 2017

Reading the grim news that North Korea continues to refine and improve its missile technology, one can't avoid reflecting on how disastrous Obama's foreign policy really was.

It's a rich topic for discussion and I could do a whole series of blog posts trying to sift through exactly which blunder was the worst, but let's just content ourselves with examining the many ways his decision to embark on an unauthorized elective war in Libya has made the world a more dangerous place.

The first and most obvious effect was that it turned Gaddafi's oddball kingdom into a failed state. Daffy Gaddafi was eccentric and obnoxious, but he also kept a lid on the place. He was a thorn in our side until the invasion of Iraq, when he decided that it was a good time to come clean with his WMD programs.

After that, he was quite reasonable and kept his nose clean. Traditional diplomacy teaches us that enemies who lay down their arms and agree to cooperate should be treated with the utmost courtesy as an object lesson to others. Gaddafi could have been a shining example that abandoning WMD research is a path to acceptance in the global community and removes the target that might otherwise be on your back.

Hillary's stupid "We came, we saw, he died," quip did just the opposite. It sent a clear and unmistakable message that the United States cannot be trusted. If you if you switch sides, we might arbitrarily overthrow you at any point in the future.

The only sure way of keeping our random military might away from you is to get working nukes as soon as possible. Hence North Korea and Iran both racing to get the bomb.

Libya is now a haven for ISIS and the constant flow of migrants - a flow Gaddafi controlled while he was in power - is destabilizing Europe.

For all the Democrat snark that George W. Bush had no exist strategy in Iraq, their acquiescence to the Libyan debacles shows they have zero credibility. Dubya at least could claim that his planners told him it would work and he trusted them.

The Obama administration has no such excuse. They ran for office largely by hammering Iraq as a disaster and then made a bigger one.

Trump faces many daunting challenges, and Libya is a big one. If would be nice if the Principled Foreign Policy Geniuses of the Vichy Republicans would give up on their childish antics and start helping Trump solve the messes Obama left behind.

July 28, 2017

Great strategists often make mistakes. What sets them apart is that they rarely make the same mistake twice.

Stepping away from the now-all-to-normal sound and fury, Trump’s decision to announce the new military transgender policy demonstrates how much of an adaptive tactician his is – and why his opponents should never underestimate him.

Before going further, it’s important to map out the political terrain he was working with.

Despite much hoopla at the time (and screeching now), the Obama policy didn’t actually change anything when it was announced – it was merely a statement that things would change later, after Obama left office. It was typical progressive virtue signaling – Obama got the credit, but his successor would have to figure out how to make it work.

This is a key point lost on people who ought to know better (cough – John McCain – cough).

Then-SecDef Ash Carter’s announcement was that the service chiefs had to figure out a policy to accommodate transgenders one year later – that is July 1, 2017.

McCain of all people should have been aware that even with a year of lead time, the military leaders couldn’t do it. They asked for more time, and were given a six-month extension by our current SecDef, James Mattis.

A key part of the equation is that Mattis is virtually alone at the Defense Dept. Very few of Trump’s people have been placed, so as we have seen elsewhere, Trump had every reason to expect damaging leaks if it looked like the policy was going to change.

So he pre-empted it.

His decision to tweet out a formal policy statement completely check-mated the Obama Deep State operatives in the DoD. As Commander-in-Chief he gives the orders. Generals who don’t like it can either toe the line or quit.

Such orders need not be printed on stationary. They could be verbal and relayed by phone or radio. Trump's decision to use a 21st Century platform merely shows that despite his age, he remains far more up to date than many of his critics.

In one bold move, he completely changed the dynamic within the bureaucracy.

Contrast this with the clusterfark in the Justice Dept., packed with Obama loyalists who rejoice in violating professional rules of conduct. It is a felony to leak classified information, or information related to an ongoing investigation, but this happens so often as to be unremarkable.

The lesson Trump learned is this: the federal bureaucracy believes it can act with impunity, utterly ignoring the law.

Had he done what the neutered Quisling Never Trumpers demanded, his policy change would have been beset with calculated leaks, lies and sabotage. News stories would feature quotes from anonymous insiders who insist that the generals are so into having trannies in the military, they can't wait to begin their own transition.

Trump knew that he had to assume sabotage within the DoD, so he pre-empted it.